German tabloids took to calling him “Grinsi Klinsi,” part term of endearment, part expression of derision. It is a reassuring grin and an enigmatic one, genuine and mysterious, cunning and unnerving, confident and confusing. Does he really know what he’s doing, or does he just think he does?

He speaks that way, too. The U.S. national soccer coach has lived in a beachside home in Newport for more than a decade and has a strong command of English. He can fluently express thoughts and emotions, only the words are sometimes jumbled, like puzzle pieces stuck in different places, ocean in the sky, borders in the middle.

We build more and more the chemistry.

I don’t think so they are better than us.

I think we are getting every year making another step forward.

Expectations are everywhere high.

And it is this seeming incongruity that could define U.S. fortunes at the 2014 World Cup, beginning Monday with the Group G opener against Ghana in rainy Natal and continuing against Portugal and Germany. All the words are there, but does it make any sense?

Pure genius, or 100-percent snake oil?

Lucid, or loco?

“Klinsmann brought some good things to table, but he’s a funny character,” says a prominent U.S. soccer federation employee, speaking on the condition of anonymity. “The guys he’s brought in from Germany will do whatever he wants. The key is whether the Americans, the Clint Dempseys, the Tim Howards, the guys who have been around a while, will truly buy into him.

“That’s the question that hangs over this team. We’re all going to have wait and see.”

Klinsmann, 49, has heard the whispers about his curious choices and impulsive decisions, about suddenly benching the team’s longtime captain the morning of a crucial World Cup qualifier, about changing practice times in the middle of the night, about using 25 different lineups in his first 25 games, about the alleged double standards with the contingent of German-American players, about the obsession with blood levels and empty-stomach runs and yoga stretches.

Three months ago he inexplicably dumped Martin Vasquez, his good friend and trusted assistant coach going back to their time at German club Bayern Munich in 2008.

Three weeks ago he insisted he wasn’t ready to announce his 23-man World Cup roster. The next day he cut Landon Donovan, considered the greatest player in U.S. history, and kept 18-year-old Julian Green, whose national-team history consisted of 31 minutes in an exhibition game a month earlier.

Three days ago he was asked about his wholly un-American admission about U.S. chances in Brazil, and instead of recanting it or qualifying it he repeated it: “To say we should win, it’s not realistic.”

Klinsmann hears the whispers and smiles. Creases his face into that goofy grin. Then he talks about, yah, inverted pyramids and the big picture and being proactive instead of reactive and changing the culture of American soccer, how we build more and more the chemistry.

He says it with a serene confidence because, well, he can. In December he received a four-year extension on a contract with a base salary of $2.5 million per year, more than double any previous U.S. national coach. There’s also the comfort that his legacy in the sport is secure no matter what he does as a coach.

Klinsmann is among the greatest strikers in German history, playing for major clubs in four countries, scoring 231 goals, playing in three World Cups, winning one in in 1990. His record as coach consists of just two stops, both in Germany, one successful, one not, which only adds to the ambiguity and intrigue of his current job.

He became Germany’s coach in 2004 and immediately started reinventing a national program that had won three World Cups and had reached the final just two years earlier. He cut popular goalkeeper Oliver Kahn and 13 others from the 2002 roster, replacing them with unproven youngsters. He hired fitness specialists from the United States. He junked Germany’s traditional sweeper system for a four-back defensive line.

Germany reached the semifinals in 2006 before losing to eventual champion Italy, but, like everything with Klinsmann, there are two perspectives: Cinderella run given their state when he took over, or nothing special considering they hosted the World Cup and had gone further four years earlier on foreign soil? Some said Grinsi Klinsi had revolutionized German soccer; others said he was a glorified cheerleader and assistant Joachim Low, Germany’s head coach at this World Cup, was the tactical mastermind.

Two years later, after turning down U.S. Soccer for the first time, Klinsmann was hired by Bayern Munich, Germany’s richest professional club. He lasted nine months, fired with five games left in the season.

“We practiced little more than fitness,” defender Philipp Lahm, who also played under Klinsmann in the 2006 World Cup, wrote in an autobiography. “Tactical things were neglected. The players had to get together before (games) to discuss how we wanted to play. After six or eight weeks all the players knew it wouldn’t work with Klinsmann. The rest of the season was damage control.”

Klinsmann brushed aside U.S. overtures again after the 2010 World Cup before finally coming to terms a year later as the first foreign coach since Bora Milutinovic in 1994. It wasn’t long before his unorthodox methods and mentality were questioned – the constant lineup changes, the two (and sometimes three or four) practices a day, the scientific obsession with fitness, the random schedule changes, the player position changes.

A lengthy story in The Sporting News, with interviews from nearly two dozen people in and around the program, depicted a team uncertain of its direction or leadership. One player called Klinsmann “scatterbrained.” There also were concerns about nepotism toward the growing contingent of players with German mothers and U.S. servicemen fathers, five of which are on the World Cup roster in Brazil.

All part of the process, he cheerfully explained, taking players out of their comfort zone, keeping them off balance, breaking them down, building them up, empowering them. “The big picture,” he kept saying.

That was March 2013. A few months later, Klinsmann’s team embarked on a record 12-game win streak, including a 2-0 victory against rival Mexico last September that clinched passage to a seventh straight World Cup.

“Certain things that maybe two years ago, they may have wondered what this was all about,” Klinsmann said that night, with an air of triumph. “All this extra work, extra here, extra there, now it’s just normal. The players come in and they know there are double (practice) sessions waiting for them.”

Winning begat acceptance, compliance. The whispers subsided. The talk of buy-in among the players grew. Even Donovan admitted at the pre-World Cup training camp last month: “He knows what it takes to be a world champion. None of us know that. He understands that very clearly.”

Donovan spoke on a Monday. The day before, starting goalkeeper Tim Howard told a crowd of reporters that Donovan “is our top one or two players. That’s just my opinion. Whether that means anything, I don’t know.”

It didn’t. That Thursday, with no warning, with no consultation of the team’s veterans, Klinsmann pulled aside the national team’s all-time leading scorer after practice and cut him.

“I am strongly convinced that this is the right way to go,” Klinsmann said the following morning, “that this is the right decision, and I believe in that. Now time will tell. If I’m not getting the job done at the end of the day, then you know the outcome of those things in the soccer world.”

And there it was. The lips parting, the cheeks lifting, the eyes flickering. The grin.